No, I'd like to be able to bring awesome people from Russia, the Czech Republic, Israel, etc who often don't have college degrees. If Canada would let me do that, I'd move my startup to Canada.
Canadian IT labour market is not so bad so you should profit by fact of moving here and have access to current pool and relatively lower wages then in SV.
Is should actually remove both of your pain points cost and qualified labor.
The issue isn't general supply, but specific engineers. Half our team is Canadian now, but many of the people we'd like to work with but can't are located elsewhere and Canadian immigration law is very unfriendly to immigrants without college degrees.
Maybe not a dime a dozen, but developer pay in Canada does seem to be considerably lower. Up to 50-60% lower, according to others in a recent HN discussion.
